No matter how much Sebastian tried to deny it, part of Flora Harimann had always known that unwanted, unwelcome feelings lingered still.
Feelings from the past that should have been left there but were not, feelings that shone through during the most intimate moments; underneath bed covers, when Marian's name would slip past his lips instead of hers, or afternoons spent out by the garden when she would catch his eye and find him looking at her in a way that made it so painfully obvious that he was trying to find something in her that he could love.
The first time him and Flora's families met to discuss an alliance to dethrone Goran, Brett had pulled her away from the dining table to remind her, in a voice of caution and sympathy, about the continued relevance of the woman named Marian Hawke.
The very same one Sebastian had fallen in love with during his time at Kirkwall.
The girl came from a noble, traditional and wealthy family of the Free Marches, the Amells. Her blood was blue and her name was well-respected and feared, despite her magical ascendency, much more than the Harimanns could ever hope to be, but she had, unfortunately, passed away in mysterious circumstances, likely related to the mages' uprising. Alas, her uncle and brother had pledged their support to his cause, in memory of her, but the fact remained the Prince still needed a Princess, and deceased Marian Hawke was not an option, regardless of how much Sebastian claimed to have felt for her.
Marian and Sebastian's story ended with tragedy; and Sebastian was matched to Flora, who had never known love until she met him again, the very person who would not feel the same for her.
She had wedded Sebastian fully aware that mutual feelings of affection were the last of any of their families' concerns. As long as no indecency besmirched each other's family trees and Goran was promptly dealt with, petty things like love hardly mattered.
Except somewhere along their forced time together in a lonely castle in the middle of the biggest and busiest city in the Free Marches, Flora began to look at Sebastian as less of the man who had been forced into marriage with her and more of a man she could learn to love, and so she did.
She learned and loved and found a comfort in him that she had never been expecting to. It took time, yes, but once she took that courageous step and the floor gave out underneath her feet and she fell for Sebastian faster than she could even blink, she could not stop. Because once you start to love someone, you are done for. You will not be able to pull yourself back out.
Maybe that is why Sebastian cannot forget that one Marian Hawke. Maybe that is why he cannot quite look at Flora the way she wants him to. Maybe it is why, when Flora foolishly tells him "I love you" in hopes that maybe this time he will say it back, he does not.
Flora wants to be angry. She wants to be able to grasp Sebastian's shoulders, shake him to his senses and scream at him to forget Marian, that he can never have his heart's desire, but he had her and she loves him and she wants him to be able to say the same for her, so, please, just let it go. However, to set her pride aside and ask something like that of him takes plenty of courage, courage that Flora is entirely sure she does not have.
So, she sits and pretends like everything is fine. Tells herself that the man she loves, loves her back, even when she knows he does not, and he knows it, too.
Playing pretend, she was quite proficient at it with her many years of courtly life.
When Sebastian holds her at midnight and presses himself close to her, it is like he is trying to imprint himself onto her very skin, trying to ingrain part of himself onto every inch of her body he can reach. In a way, he does, in patches of faint red and purple and dark blues that mark her skin wherever his lips go.
They almost never talk at night. They are much too busy wrapped up in each other's arms and legs to bother with words. Flora threads her fingers through his hair and pulls him in and Sebastian kisses her so hard it makes her think he is trying to make up for everything that he cannot give her; kisses with passion that is not quite driven by love but rather desperation for something, someone, he cannot quite have.
It hurts, because Flora knows that when Sebastian groans into her mouth and tightens his grip on her waist and glides his lips down her skin, it is not her face in his head, and it is not her name that leaves his lips, either, when the night progresses and they are drunk in one another's touch.
Flora is okay with it, though, or so she tells herself.
She has Sebastian. She is happy. She loves him, even though he does not. She is happy.
She has to be.
Jealousy.
That is what Flora feels.
Flora has only met Marian Hawke once, and she owes her a debt of gratitude, but she is pathetically jealous of her. She is jealous of everything about Marian that Sebastian fell in love with, whatever that might be. It is ridiculous because she does not even know what she looks like or how she is as a person, all that Flora knows about her is that she must truly be something else to have captured Prince Sebastian Vael's heart, and to still have it in her hands after all of this time, from beyond the grave.
An arranged marriage and over a year forced apart by death itself, you would think that that would be enough for Sebastian to move on.
They have been together for a while. Sebastian still looks at her like he is not really seeing her. He does not love her, and Flora is not exactly sure whether he ever will. Every day she wakes and hopes that by some miracle he has opened his eyes and has begun to finally see past the future she knows he still fantasizes about with Marian, but that is yet to happen. For now, Flora is helplessly in love with a man who has his heart set on someone else.
At some point, she believes she has become angry, but not at Sebastian nor the woman he loves.
No, she is angry at herself.
She catches sight of herself in the mirror and hates what is staring back at her. She goes up to her reflection and frowns and contemplates what it is she is missing. If the sight of her own face is revolting to herself, then it is no doubt that others feel the same way, including Sebastian, and is that why he cannot love her? Because of how ugly she is? Or is it how she acts? How she speaks, how she laughs, how she smiles, how she is?
Whenever Sebastian disappears to "clear his head" and Flora is left alone, she finds that the castle is too small to hold the vast amount of nothingness spilling out of her at the seams, so she goes out into the highest balcony that overlooks the city and breathes in as much of the breeze as she can until the feeling in her chest does not quite feel as suffocating anymore.
It is not the marriage she had been hoping for all of those years ago when she was a naive child who believed in fairy tales and happy endings, but at the very least, she loves, and she is grateful to Sebastian for allowing her to know what that feels like, even when he cannot quite give it back to her.
Hearts are made of soft things, tissue and blood and muscle. Things that break and wound easy. Things that tend to scar instead of heal. There is only so much you can do until a human reach breaking point and their heart gives away, and Flora finds herself one Thursday evening with blood dripping down her knuckles and shards of glass scattered on the floor.
"What happened?" Sebastian's voice is soft, imploring, almost loving but not quite. It is always almost. Almost what Flora wants. Almost how a husband should love his wife. Almost.
"Tripped," Flora winces.
Sebastian kneels down in front of her from where she is sitting on the floor of her chambers, hands gently caressing her own to inspect her blood-smattered knuckles. It is a terrible excuse, how does one go about tripping and punching a mirror?
Sebastian, though, is a merciful man and does not question it, and Flora does not have to tell him that she had looked into the mirror and despised what she saw so much that she had been overcome by an irrational anger and began to beat her fists against her own reflection until the glass splintered and the skin of her wrists did so along with it.
Sebastian tells her to wait, so she does, sitting in the cold and lonely room by herself with blood dripping down her knuckles onto the floor until Sebastian comes back with a cloth in one hand and a pouch of healing ointments in the other. Once he has cleaned up the mess on the floor, he kneels in front of her again and, quietly, gently, he begins to wipe the blood from her hands.
"Does it hurt?" Sebastian murmurs. His brows are drawn in the middle in a slight frown as he tries his hardest not to press too hard. He pauses and looks up at her, and his eyes are gentle, almost loving. Almost.
Flora forces out a painful laugh. "Nothing I cannot handle."
A smile tugs on the edges of Sebastian's lips. "As expected."
Then he quietly resumes nursing her wounds, and Flora does not realize that she has started crying until she tastes the tears on her lips. Sebastian notices but does not say anything.
Because she is pathetically in love and she wants him to feel the same, when the cuts on her wrist have been bandaged and Sebastian is tucking away all of the tubes of ointment in his pouch, saying something about being more careful the next time (even though the both of them know fully well that her tripping was an excuse).
Flora tries again and says, "I love you."
Sebastian freezes for nothing more than a split-second, but Flora notices, her gaze is fixed on him intently, helplessly trying to gauge a reaction that part of her knows it will not come, but she wishes it would.
Her wishes are unheard. Sebastian nods, turns his head just a fraction of an inch to look at her out of the corner of his eye, and offers her a sad smile.
Almost.
"No, listen to me, Sebastian, I am tired!"
"And you don't think I am?"
"I know you love her. Maker, of course I know, I see it every time you look at me, but I'm asking you to try to love me!"
"You say it like it's easy."
There is a sob rattling in the back of her throat. Flora swallows it back down and turns away from Sebastian like he has already not seen the absolute mess of tears on her cheeks.
Sebastian stares out of the window, jaw taut and his fists clenched so tight at his sides his knuckles have gone a ghostly white.
"I knew we were getting married but I never expected much beyond a sealed contract and an agreement between our families—I never expected to fall in love with you but I did so here I am now asking you to do the same for me."
A beat of silence. "You're not her."
Another swallowed sob. A brand-new fissure in her heart that joins the thousands of others. "I'm sorry."
More silence. Then: "I am too."
Then, Sebastian leaves first, because he always does.
Their fights do not last long. Days follow and Sebastian and Flora go about as they always do, pretending like the gaping void between them is not there.
Whenever night comes, Sebastian will roll over and press a quiet kiss to the back of Flora's shoulders, snake one hand around her waist, and whisper I am sorry, and Flora will turn and drag her lips against his until Sebastian captures them in his own and they are stuck in that endless loop of want again.
Sebastian kisses the breath out of her and she kisses him back. Kisses him enough to make up for those few terrible minutes of anger she'd accidentally let loose days ago. Kisses him with love, with passion, with everything Sebastian does not nurtures for her.
When she gasps for air and Sebastian pulls away and trails his lips down her neck, leaving a trail of what feels like pure flame behind in his wake, she digs her nails into his shoulders and holds him in place.
In a strained voice she says: "Look at me."
He does not. Sebastian kisses her throat and against her will she sucks in a desperate, shuddering breath, and the air sounds like Sebastian's name. "Look at me, Sebastian." She repeats, fingers pressing into his skin more insistently.
This time he stops and pries his lips away from her skin and hovers over her, eyes searching hers.
"When you're with me," she begins, eyes dark, breath coming quick, "I want to be the only one inside your head. I want you to look into my eyes and see only me."
His grip on her waist tightens; her hands twist unsteadily in his hair, gaze clearing just a tiny bit as she says. "Please."
Then he is dipping down to kiss her again, lips parted, breath rough. Somewhere in between their almost frantic kisses he whispers a response, and Flora is much too lost in the feeling of his skin on hers but she thinks that Sebastian might be breathing words into her skin. They sound like apologies, sound like I'm sorry, sound like Marian.
Flora throws her head back as Sebastian brushes his lips over the curve of her collarbones. It feels like hope. Feels like a door opening to something. Feels something more than almost.
Alas, it all goes back to normal, and the days pass on, and the hope is being slowly sucked out of her.
Flora knows she will, one day, bear the fruit of the Vael lineage, and then her use will be expired. She knows Sebastian will not toss her away, but she also knows she does not have the strength of character to leave.
She was forever stuck.